Methodology

This report concerns rocket attacks by Hamas and other
Palestinian armed groups on civilian population centers in Israel since November 2008. Human Rights Watch researchers conducted 21 interviews
for this report in Israel and in Gaza. Fifteen interviews were conducted
with witnesses to rockets attacks, family members of victims, medical
personnel, and municipal and other Israeli officials in Sderot, Ashkelon,
Netivot, Ashdod, and Beer Sheva in Israel. We inspected the sites of five
rocket attacks in Israel.

Human Rights Watch interviewed six Palestinian victims and
witnesses to rocket attacks by armed groups that accidentally struck inside Gaza, as well as Palestinians who witnessed rocket launches.

Interviews were conducted in Arabic
and Hebrew, with interpreters, and in English.

Rockets Used Against Israeli Targets

The rockets used by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza are unguided weapons that the groups fire mostly from northern Gaza. Each rocket has
four stabilizing wings at one end, an engine in the middle, and a warhead. A
rail elevated on two legs serves as the launching mechanism.

Armed groups in Gaza make “Qassam” rockets using
basic materials.[4]
The fuel comes from a combination of potassium nitrate and sugar. The warhead
consists of a metal shell containing an explosive made from urea nitrate, found
in fertilizers, and TNT. The fuse comes from a small-arms cartridge.[5]
A journalist who was taken to an Islamic Jihad “rocket factory” in
2008 described the production process:

One of the team welds the rocket casings together from
metal pipes, while another fills the warhead with up to three kilograms of TNT.
Abdul's specialty is the last step: the rocket propulsion. He and his mates
brew up the fuel out of a mixture of glucose, fertilizer and a few other
chemicals, which is used to fire the rockets at distances of up to nine
kilometers. Right at the end, he inserts the detonator cap, which makes the
missile explode on impact. They hide the finished rockets in depots, which the
launch commandos can then freely avail themselves of.[6]

The locally made rockets have become increasingly powerful
and able to reach deeper into Israeli territory. The earliest version carried a
half-kilogram payload and had a maximum range of 4.5 kilometers. The
second-generation rocket, developed in 2002, weighs 32 kilograms, and has a 5
to 9 kilogram payload and a range of 8 to 9.5 kilometers. The third generation
“Qassam 3” is 2 meters long, 170 millimeters in diameter and weighs
90 kilograms. First produced in 2005, its maximum range is around 10 kilometers
and it carries a payload of up to 20 kilograms.[7]

In 2008, Hamas began firing 122-millimeter-diameter,
Grad-type rockets, manufactured abroad and apparently smuggled into the Gaza
Strip.[8]
Most of these rockets had ranges of less than 20 kilometers, but some landed
nearly 40 kilometers inside Israel. The deputy commander of Israel’s Home Front Command, Brig. Gen. Abraham Ben David, said that a rocket that struck Beer
Sheba on December 31, 2008 was manufactured in China, and contained metal
pellets.[9]
Based on photographs of rockets that landed in Israel near Gan Yavne and Bnei Darom on December 28, 2008, the US-based Global
Security website tentatively concluded that Hamas evidently had fired Chinese-manufactured 122mm WeiShei-1E rockets.[10] The WS-1E solid propellant rocket is 2.9
meters long and weighs up to 74 kilograms. The rocket comes in short-range (10
to 12 kilometer) and longer-range (20 to 40 kilometer) versions. The
short-range rocket carries a modular warhead weighing 26 to 28 kilograms; the
longer-range rocket warhead weighs 18 to 22 kilograms. The high explosive
warhead can be augmented with a blast fragmentation warhead containing 4,000
steel balls, which can be lethal over a radius of about 100 meters.[11]

[4]Hamas
referred to its rockets as “Qassams” for Sheikh Iss al-Din
al-Qassam, a Syrian who in the 1930s worked among displaced and landless
Palestinian peasants in what is now northern Israel, and whose death in a clash
in 1935 with British troops helped to spark the 1936-39 Palestinian revolt.

[11]Other
types of warheads are also available for the WS-E1 rocket. According to
the Defense Update website, a 17 kilogram thermobaric warhead is also available,
containing 6.2 kilograms of explosive and 1,500 steel balls.
“Palestinians Use Extended-Range 122 mm Rockets from China for Long-Range Attacks,” Defense Update.com,
http://www.defense-update.com/newscast/1208/analysis/311208_palestinians_use_chineese_ws2e_extendedrange_rockets.html#more,
accessed April 28, 2009.